Advanced Beauty - 18 Sound Sculptors

Advanced Beauty - 18 Sound Sculptors - 2009
Curated by Universal Everything
Soundtracks by Freefarm

A DVD was created and there are links to purchase the DVD on their website. The website created to support the collection is excellent with links to the artists whose work is documented online, with video clips online on their website and on their vimeo channel, so all can be seen online which is a great resource.

"Advanced Beauty is an ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound, an ever-growing collaboration between programmers, artists, musicians, animators and architects.

The first collection is a series of audio-reactive 'video sound sculptures'. Inspired by synasthesia, the rare, sensory experience of seeing sound or tasting colours, these videos are physical manifestations of sound, sculpted by volume, pitch or structure of the soundtrack.

The films embrace unusual video making processes, the visual programming language Processing, high-end audio analysis and fluid dynamic simulations alongside intuitive responses in traditional cell animation. Each artist was given the same set of parameters to work within; to start, finish and exist within a white space, creating a seamless coherence, all sculptures sharing the same white environment.

Using 1920 HD format, with 5:1 surround sound, the films transform the screen into a digital canvas, how the minimalism of a single, floating pixel can be as engaging as the maximalism of an intense multicoloured explosion.

Curated by Universal Everything and musician Freeform, Advanced Beauty is an international collaboration, taking in a family of artists from London, Russia, New York, Japan, Buenos Aires, Glasgow to San Francisco."
http://advancedbeauty.org/blog/about

PREVIEW VIDEOS

http://advancedbeauty.org/blog/archives/category/previews


http://www.vimeo.com/universal/videos/

VISUAL MUSIC at Mad Hatters' Review

CALL FOR VISUAL MUSIC WORKS - an event to be curated by Jean Detheux (incredible filmmaker visual music artist - see http://www.vudici.net/)

Visual Music (event curated by Jean Detheux) may be described as the art of combining music and moving image into "something" that neither medium can offer on its own. Music can inform images as much as images can inform music. Visual Music manifests its author’s (or authors’) discovery and creation of a novel composition that marries its components in a manner that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. In exploring this Art form, one often encounters two "bad" extremes: one consists of music and images that merely mirror each other in a very literal, redundant way. The other "bad" extreme offers music and images so far apart that they have nothing to do with each other. The components do not inform each other. The paradox of Visual Music is that even if it is very often presented as "New Media," it has been around for a very long time, even predating the invention of cinema by a significant margin. Maura McDonnell has written an excellent article on that subject (pdf document available under the "New Visual Music Essay" title): www.soundingvisual.com. If you feel that your work accomplishes the mission of “Visual Music,” submit up to two.

More information and for links to submission guidelines:
http://visualmusic.ning.com/forum/topics/call-for-visual-music-entries

Lichtspiel: Contemporary Abstract Animation and Visual Music

Los Angeles premieres. Co-presented with Center for Visual Music

“Joost Rekveld has provided an undeniable masterpiece with #37.” International Film Festival Rotterdam

This ravishing “play of light” explores rhythmic abstractions in the cinematic tradition of Oskar Fischinger and visual music animation. The centerpiece of the program is the Los Angeles debut of Joost Rekveld’s #37 (Netherlands, 2009, 31 min., 35mm CinemaScope), a stunningly beautiful study of the propagation and diffraction of light through crystalline structures. Sure to bend more than a few minds, the lineup also offers award-winning animated shorts from around the world, most of which are screening in L.A. for the first time. Featured artists include Scott Draves, Robert Seidel, Steven Woloshen, Bärbel Neubauer, Thorsten Fleisch, Bret Battey, Michael Scroggins, Samantha Krukowski, Mondi, Devon Damonte, Scott Nyerges, Vivek Patel and Yusuke Nakajima. Plus the final film by the late CGI wizard Richard “Doc” Baily.

In person: Joost Rekveld

Curated by Center for Visual Music with Steve Anker.

http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/

http://www.redcat.org/event/lichtspiel

Advanced Curator Notes

Links to Artists websites

Center for Visual Music
Scott Draves
Joost Rekveld
Robert Seidel
Steven Woloshen
Bärbel Neubauer
Thorsten Fleisch
Bret Battey
Michael Scroggins
Samantha Krukowski
Mondi Vimeo Channel
Devon Damonte
Scott Nyerges
Vivek Patel
Yusuke Nakajima

Australian Cinémathèque - Visual Music - 2008

PAST EVENT

This is a past Visual Music event held in Queensland  Gallery of Modern Art in 2008.  The website documenting the Visual Music program screened is really useful as it provides an excellent overview of historical works in particular with a really useful list of their films, each filmmaker/artist is linked with a page overviewing their work and listing the films screened for the Visual Music program.  The website also provides information on the curators for the event - a really useful resource on Visual Music. (Author comment)

Visual Music - 28 March – 1 June 2008 

"The cinematic genre of Visual Music draws on elements of form, colour and rhythm in music and images to create visual symphonies. Working with abstraction and figuration, gesture, pitch, beat and palette, filmmakers have explored the dynamism of sight and sound synaesthesia - hearing colour and line, seeing rhythm and tone - through innovative techniques and aesthetics. The Australian Cinémathèque’s Visual Music program includes an extraordinary range of approaches to this genre, from the Silly Symphonies, early Walt Disney musical animations, to retrospective programs of visual music pioneers, selections of rarely screened classics and contemporary works...."

Works shown by:

Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker

Saul Bass

Jordan Belson

Stan Brakhage

Mary Ellen Bute

Oskar Fischinger

Len Lye

Light Play: Visual Music Pioneers

Norman McLaren

Rare Classics: Essential Visual Music

Soundfields from the Netherlands

Bärbel Neubauer

James and John Whitney

http://qag.qld.gov.au/cinematheque/past_programs/2008/visual_music

"The Australian Cinémathèque, located at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, presents retrospective and thematic film programs and exhibitions, exploring the important lines of influence between the moving image and other areas of visual culture, and showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and artists. Its mission is to collect, conserve, present and interpret film and screen culture."

Source: http://qag.qld.gov.au/cinematheque

Computer Baroque - online exhibition - 2009

Computer Baroque - curated by Richard Wright.
online exhibition from 14 April to 14 July 2009

"Animate Projects presents Computer Baroque, an online exhibition, curated by Richard Wright. Computer Baroque is a selection of defining works in the history of artists’ digital moving image. Rarely seen, they represent a period – the late eighties and early nineties - in which computer animation was the focus for the most audacious and exuberant experiments across all areas of new media, art and technology...
The Computer Baroque programme screened at Tate Modern on 20 March 2009; the majority of those works are now showing here from 14 April to 14 July 2009. Programme notes by curator Richard Wright."

See: http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_project/computer_baroque/baroque

Programme Note

..."featuring pioneers Karl Sims, Yoichiro Kawaguchi, William Latham, Beriou, John Tonkin, Chris Landreth, Peter Callas, Simon Biggs, Ruth Lingford, James Duesing, Paul Garrin, Shelley Lake, The Butler Brothers and Jason White & Richard Wright."

See also: Essay by Richard Wright
Computer Baroque: Computer animation 1987–1995 by Richard Wright (2009)